Wednesday, 20 February 2008

Web Service Threats

I've been doing some work recently that involves enumerating the potential threats faced by SOA implementations. To help Google, here are a few of the resources I've found useful in doing so:

ZapThink - XML Threat Management:
As you'd expect of ZapThink, a good high-level description of XML threats in general, but no specific terminology for individual threats, and no categorisation of threats.

Forum Systems - XML Threats:
Forum Systems sell XML/web service security products, so as you'd expect they're hot on illustrating the risks associated with using Web Services to customers. Nothing like a rainstorm to sell umbrellas. This page provides a very high-level summary of the types of attack vectors used by malicious service consumers; a companion white paper, "Anatomy of a Web Service Attack" provides a lot of additional detail explaining these types of attack.

Interestingly, there doesn't seem to be a consensus over a taxonomy (categorisation system) for these threats. Possibly the closest we get is in Scott's article, where he suggests that all web service threats can be put in three categories: API, Infrastructure and Transaction attacks. Sadly, Scott doesn't go so far as categorising the threats identified by the other vendors. Hopefully when this picture emerges, it'll represent industry wide consensus. This should allow vendors such as Layer 7, Forum Systems and IBM (with their DataPower range) to communicate with customers in a consistent manner, and allow them to sell their wares based on customer need and product capability, which after all is the key to long term relationships and repeat business.